Elon Musk Can’t Stop Throwing Shade at Apple

Tesla, the electric-car company founded by Elon Musk, may be crushing Detroit and worth nearly $50 billion, but it’s hardly in the same league as Apple, the world’s most valuable public company. Still, that doesn’t mean that Musk is fazed by his bigger tech rival—and he’s decidedly unimpressed by its efforts to develop an autonomous vehicle.

“I don't know what they're doing on the car front,” Musk said on an earnings call Wednesday when an investor asked whether he’d consider partnering with Apple on self-driving cars, or whether he sees the company as a competitor. “It's not clear.” But Musk, who admitted he owns an iPhone, did offer up some faint praise. “It's a cool company,” he added.

“If you don't make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple. I’m not kidding.”

It’s not the first time Musk has taken a shot at Apple for encroaching on his territory. When he was asked in 2015 about Apple’s rumored plans for an electric car, his response was savage. “They have hired people we’ve fired. We always jokingly call Apple the ‘Tesla Graveyard,’ ” he told German newspaper Handelsblatt. “If you don't make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple. I’m not kidding.”

“Did you ever take a look at the Apple Watch?” he asked. “No, seriously: It’s good that Apple is moving and investing in this direction. But cars are very complex compared to phones or smartwatches.”

Musk may have reason to be tetchy. While Apple’s secretive self-driving car endeavor, code-named Project Titan, has reportedly been beset by obstacles—including a recent staff shakeup—C.E.O. Tim Cook also has nearly $250 billion in liquid assets at his disposal. That’s enough to buy up a number of its self-driving competitors if it chooses, including Tesla and all of Detroit. Indeed, Apple was previously rumored to be interested in outright purchasing a car company—like McLaren—and even approached Musk about the possibility of scooping up Tesla. (Musk said he wasn’t interested.)

Luckily for Tesla, Apple now appears to have other plans. Under the direction of Bob Mansfield, who developed the iPad, the company is currently focusing its efforts on developing driverless car technology, as opposed to an actual driverless car. And Apple appears to be making progress. Last week, after getting clearance from the California Department of Motor Vehicles, Bloomberg spotted an Apple self-driving car in the wild: a white Lexus RX450h S.U.V. decked out with commercially-bought sensors, driving around the streets of Silicon Valley.

Tesla, meanwhile, seems set on eventually challenging Apple for the title of world’s most-valuable company. When a Barclays analyst asked Musk on Wednesday’s earnings call about a scenario he had previously outlined in which Tesla could achieve a $700 billion market cap—an amount he noted was in line with Apple’s valuation at the time—Musk gave an eyebrow-raising response. “Well, now I may want to preface this by, of course I could be completely delusional, but I think I see a clear path to that outcome,” he said. “The set of steps necessary to achieve that outcome seems pretty obvious. I am heavily involved in Tesla [getting] incredibly good at the machine that builds the machine, which involves, by the way, a tremendous amount of software.”

Some investors seem less sure of Musk than he is of himself: though Tesla is nearing the value of General Motors, it had a loss of $675 million in 2016. By comparison, General Motors reported $9.4 billion in earnings. Hedge-fund manager David Einhornsaid Wednesday that Tesla is “reminiscent of the March 2000 dotcom bubble.”